


Family Matters

by Thunderrrstruck



Category: Psych (TV 2006)
Genre: (current tags apply to chapters 1 & 2), Divorce, Emotional Constipation, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-11
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:54:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29359872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thunderrrstruck/pseuds/Thunderrrstruck
Summary: The year is 1994. Shawn leaves his room one innocent afternoon for a juice box, but what he gets is so much more (and so much worse) than Grape-a-licious.(Updates every other Thursday)
Relationships: Burton "Gus" Guster & Shawn Spencer, Henry Spencer & Shawn Spencer, Madeleine Spencer & Shawn Spencer, Past Madeleine Spencer/Henry Spencer
Comments: 5
Kudos: 5





	1. i don't want my own love wasted

**Author's Note:**

> Like everything as of late, this story is inspired by AJR, the song that specifically set the tone is "My Play" :) I love this band probably _too_ much, but eh there's nothing bad about too much love. The world needs more love, I think!
> 
> This was going to be a one-shot, but after it got far too long, I separated it into a two-shot. Even doing that left it off with some nice potential for a full-on multi-chap, so if inspiration strikes enough I may whip up more of this after chapter two's posted!

“Your dad and I, well, we’re getting a divorce.”

Blinking is all Shawn can do for the next couple seconds. Of all the things to stun him into silence, nothing like this crossed his mind. Sure, the household doesn’t possess the same jolly energy of other families like the Gusters. Sure, many nights shouts echo up from the kitchen to his bedroom, and he turns to his vinyl for reprieve. But parents, they’re parents. They're supposed to be a team, they're supposed to be there. They're supposed to be soulmates, the Harry and Sally of real life. Or Marty and Jenny. Or Molly and Judd, in a weird, twist-ending (but oddly fitting) kind of way. Shawn never let himself think about the alternative, because surely, it isn't that bad. Everyone fights, it's a part of life. Once, Gus mentioned that his parents fight. _His!_

“You’re- what?” It stutters out, even though he heard perfectly, even though he was paying enough attention that he can recall the sounds with immaculate precision.

“We’ve tried to make it work, but sometimes, a step back is necessary to…”

And that’s when Shawn stops listening. He turns up the volume of his internal radio and drowns in the sounds of _Footloose_ , exact preservations of unreality living rent-free in his mind. How long has this been going on? Have they tried _everything_? Does he have a choice in who he lives with? He’ll be eighteen in half a year, the nationally-agreed-upon date of independence. Certainly, he’ll be shown some autonomy in the matter.

But this flavour of autonomy leaves a bitter taste in his mouth.

Mom takes his hand and drags him to the living room. She all but pushes him onto the armchair - dad’s chair - and takes up residency herself on the couch.

“Okay, Goose. Tell me what you’re feeling.”

Her forearms press against her knees, lips tightening into a smile, but it’s all a show for him. A natural sheen is missing from her eyes.

“What's going to happen to the house?" he asks, because focusing on the people of the equation just upsets his stomach more.

His mom takes a deep breath and her eyes dip towards the coffee table. A magazine lies on the table, a group of hikers - two adults and two children - on the cover. They stare, unblinking, at the ceiling, but even when he turns away, the image haunts him. Not that he wants to hike, not that he cares for camping or fishing or other nonsense like that. It's the gleeful faces that look sinister. His future turns a sickly shade of green and melts. It drips and drops, a slow progression but he feels every second.

"Well. Your father will still be living here–"

"You're moving out?" Shawn jumps in.

She nods.

"Do I get to choose where I live?"

"Your father and I discussed that, too." Shawn notices a muscle twitch behind her cheek. "You only have a little under a year left of high school, you're so close! So you'll be staying here."

"Wait, I can't choose? Why can't I stay with _you_?"

"I'm not staying in Santa Barbara," she explains, and with the final word, the floor is ripped from under Shawn's feet. He stares, his mouth parted, and feels his throat begin to dry.

_"What?"_

"There's a job offer in San Diego," she says.

"Is there a train line or something, at least?" he muses aloud. "Or you could buy me that motorcycle I've been wanting,–!"

She smiles sadly, and that's when the disbelief and shock flips. With every heaving breath, his teeth clench tighter. It feels like the timer rang and the water's boiled, and now it's frothing towards the lid.

"I don't think your father–," begins Mom with an airy tone to soften the 'no'.

Shawn shoots to his feet, cutting across her words, cutting them short before he can hear any more. "Oh, what does _he_ know!" he shouts.

His mother visibly recoils. Her eyebrows pull together into a frown. "Shawn, please–."

"What do _you_ know?" he shouts again. Is it just him or is the whole house shaking? He struggles to hold his footing, just standing there makes the world twist and spin until his stomach rolls with nausea. Maybe he's leaning, maybe he's falling; he revolves on carpet until the next few steps take him to the stairs. In only a handful of stomps, his head winds up buried in his pillow and his record player blaring _Shout!_ to drown out the sound of his whole world crashing to the ground. He doesn't hear the knocking at his door nor the rattling of the knob until it inclines to earthquake levels. Even then, he pitches his head to the other side of the pillow and stares at the legs of his desk.

Perhaps _Tears for Fears_ isn't the best music choice, since all he wants to do now is _let it all out_. Even when the record changes tracks, his heart is too far engrained by an urge to do something drastic to change its beat now.

He knows if he opens the door, he'll have to deal with it all. So what if he doesn't open the _door_?

Shawn lifts himself out of bed and creeps to the window. The light outside has softened to a dark, cloudy blue, sunset imminent. He always wanted to sneak out this way but made the mistake of letting his parents know of said urge. _Worry worts_ , he scowls while ripping open the safety lock at the top of the bottom panel. Chased by shouts of his name and sighed out orders to open up, Shawn swings his legs through the opening and breaks out across the singles. His back scrapes the window's bottom edge, but it's not a pain which slows one down. He's motivated. He creeps to the corner, where the roof follows the hallway inside and turns off at a right angle. He knows what will come if he stops now . Not only will he hear an order – _t_ _he_ order – the one that will tether him here, and yes, his room is in this house, and yes, Gus is close by, and yes, he's already a month into senior year which he typically wouldn't care about except Abigail's giving him less and less of a hard time and he wants to see how things will turn out (here's to hoping) – but the biting tone to 'have some goddamn respect' rings around in his tonal memory. He manages a laugh – a dry, bitter, venomous laugh – for no one in particular. _Like I should be the concerned with respect_ , he thinks his snarky retort, _when you're the one kicking Mom out_.

A lake-facing terrace, sunset red trim, and a snow-white fence. A single question unknowingly kickstarts the entire snowball: _Why isn't Mom the one sticking around?_

Behind him, the hinges of his bedroom door shudder and Shawn casts a glance back in time to see his father barging through. He misses the relief flashing across Dad's face when their eyes lock, because it's quickly overshadowed by fear, a realisation of where the teen stands.

Henry leans against the window frame, "Shawn, get down from there."

"Whatever you say," Shawn says apathetically, enjoying the fact that it wasn't expressed _how_ he should. Just that he should. So, if he climbed down the lattice on the side of the covered porch, technically he's doing nothing wrong. He steps within a foot of the edge before turning around and lowering his first foot onto the lattice. Doing this in front of the strictest man in the universe? Not his brightest idea ever. But who says spite is anything even remotely logical. Looking only at the roof and the "rungs" of his makeshift latter, he eases himself further down.

"You're going to hurt yourself, son," his tone a harsh contrast to the sentiment of the words.

"Nahh," Shawn dismisses, by now only his head peeking over the shingles. The haste in his veins gives him an extra boost but a quiver in his shoes. The next time he pulls out his toes from the grate, it requires an extra force his hands aren't prepared for. His foot dangles into the open, wrenching his fingers from their holds. For a moment, he's flying, the next, his back crashes into pseudo-soft soil; the air rips from his lungs.

He can't even groan. He can barely blink, his chest as cold and hollow as the fluffy condensation above. Whenever he sucks for breath, his lungs rattle. When he shifts, his thighs dig into mulch Quick recall pinpoints his location in a bare garden patch, the previous home of a lemon tree. Once that had wilted and died – either not enough sunlight, or not enough water, or not enough nutrients, Shawn can't have cared less about the botany lesson –, the damn thing was cut down and the soil patch lay barren ever since. Over the years, any dreams of homemade lemonade faded from bright to dim to non-existent.

 _Guess Dad was too busy not fixing things with_ _Mom_.

It may be unfair for him to think, as too many factors contribute to the falling through of plans, but it is far easier to just harp on the one.

He’s still grappling for breath when the back door creaks over its sliding track. "Jesus, Shawn! What did you think you'd accomplish with a stunt like that?!"

Shawn coughs before rolling onto his side with a groan. He digs his elbow into the dirt and shoves through the hollow feeling enough to clamber to a stand. His lungs ache, his back throbs, his neck stiffens, but none of that matters when your veins are pumping wildly and the fear of facing facts is the only real thing you feel.

In the corner of his eye, thinning blond hair and a beet red forehead clunk against wooden planks, stopping at the end of the of the porch.

“What did I always tell you about going on the roof?"

" _That's_ what you're worried about?" grumbles Shawn.

"Look, this means things are going to change, yes, but it's not the end of the world. Some things you just have to live with."

"No, I _don't_ ," he argues. It doesn't sit right with him to hear the emotionless gruff of his voice, the typical these-are-the-facts-now-deal way of speaking. It's like he doesn't even care about what this means. It like he doesn't even _want_ to change the writing on the wall; how hard can it be? Take an eraser, shave away the letters, and _write your own goddamn ending_. It doesn't seem hard to an adolescent mind. It shouldn't be, not for something that matters!

Shawn is not athletic, and his muscles still quiver from impact, but at least oxygen is flowing freely through his lungs again. He races for the gate.

"Come inside and we'll talk about it."

But Shawn's already undoing the latch.

"Shawn," rings out the exasperation. On the other side of the fence, he finally turns to glare back at his dad. What else is he supposed to do, other than assign blame to something? Someone _had_ to have had the idea first, resigning themselves from so much more than a failed relationship. _Someone_ gave up first, and the man with the stony features seems like the perfect candidate.

"Just.. _leave me alone_ ," he spats before turning his attention to the road. It feels like he concentrates harder than he ever has before when he breaks into a run, focused on a rhythm of breaths and feet and quantifying heartbeat. He runs and runs and runs, not caring where he ends up, as long as it's not right back where he started.


	2. now i don't know if they faked it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shawn runs to the only other place he can think of.

Stumbling up the porch steps, Shawn’s feet clutter to a stop before a crimson-painted door. He rasps a few seconds, still jarred by his collision with the ground an entire fifteen minutes ago, but it isn’t the focus of right now. Frankly, he doesn’t believe he’ll ever recover fully, not with the steady progression of burdens that have dumped themselves upon his shoulders in the span of just one afternoon. It doesn’t matter anymore how his actions to cope haven’t been the healthiest; he’s here, so he straightens his knees, he knocks, and he waits for Gus to open the goddamn door.

The door swings backwards, but the answerer stands a few inches shorter than Shawn’s best friend.

“Mrs. G, hi,” Shawn says, gulping back another pant. He’s still winded from the run over.

“Shawn,” she greets, sporting a smile and a pleasant tone which put to contrast her furrowed brow. Her tone, albeit pleasant, rings with a sense of broken tradition. “What a pleasant surprise. Although, we would have preferred if you had called ahead.”

“Can I–?” tries Shawn, but his lungs still cannot support much longer of a sentence.

“Gus is upstairs, but he’s busy with homework for the night.”

“Can I just, real quick?” Shawn asks. “I’ll be quick, promise.”

Maybe something in his voice tipped her off. Maybe his face is more transparent than he thinks. Maybe she senses that if she pushes, something less than ideal would happen. Her cheeks are no longer polite, rosy pillows.

“Is everything alright, dear?”

“Yeah, can I-?” Shawn mimes to the second story.

He catches the beginning of a nod before shooting past her. He knows the Guster’s house like the back of his hand, takes the steps two at a time – he’d take them three at once if not for the stitch in his side, – and before long, he breaks through Gus’ bedroom door and collapses onto his bed.

The boy in question jolts in his desk chair.

“What are you  _ doing  _ here, Shawn!?”

To which the young Spencer merely shrugs. “Hang out?”

Gus swivels in his desk chair, his expression an unshakable deadpan.

“I’m  _ busy _ , Shawn. I can’t tonigh–.”

Shawn pulls his forehead into a frown. This time, he hadn’t cut Gus off. The other teen did it all on his own accord.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” Shawn throws back.  _ I’m not that transparent, am I? _

“Something’s up.”

“I told you,  _ nothing’s _ up!”

“Right, and I went to the moon yesterday.”

Choosing to ignore the sarcasm, Shawn makes his eyes light up. “Really? That’s awesome! What kind of cheese is it made of?”

Gus says nothing, he only narrows his eyes.

Shawn flounces into a cross-legged position. He starts grabbing at the drawers of his friend’s bedside table, rooting around inside like he owns the place.

“Is it your dad again?”

“No,” Shawn bats away, “sort of.” He lifts out an action figure and fiddles with its arms. “Dude, who keeps Flasher-whatever in a cupboard?”

“One: it’s  _ The _ _Flash_. Two: that’s not a cupboard, it’s a drawer, come on. And three: be careful with that, it’s limited edition!”

“Jeez,” Shawn mumbles, refusing to wither under Gus’ adamant stare. He puts the figurine back in the  drawer , shoves it closed, and tries the one below it.

“What’s ‘sort of’ mean?”

“Kind of.”

“With your  _ dad _ .”

From the depths of the table, Shawn drags out a Lite Brite, rainbow pegs displayed in a circle and the beginnings of a word.  _ P-L-U-- _ ; Shawn snorts.

“Dude, what does this spell?”

The Lite Brite is ripped from his hands.

“Answer the damn question, Shawn!”

“Does your mom let you curse like that?” he asks mockingly, having not missed the subtle wince upon Gus’ own swear slip. He waits for an answer, anything to riff off of, for he doesn’t want to give voice to his troubles. But a peek towards his best friend loosens his lips. While things around him may crumble into dust, the one thing he’d hate to see crumble with it is their bond. “My parents are getting divorced,” he mumbles.

Gus’ eyes widen.

“What? Really?”

Shawn nods, solemn, pursed lips.

“Wow. I mean, you said they fight a lot, but, wow.”

“You can say that again,” Shawn groans sarcastically, falling back against the mattress. His hair falls off the furthest edge, and he brings his hands to his forehead. His skin still simmers from the non-stop jog over here, and beads of sweat are lingering. “Don’t  _ your _ parents fight?”

“Sometimes.” Shawn can hear the shrug in his voice. “Yeah, of course, but they always end up working it out in the end.”

“Hey!” he snaps, an instinctual defence stemming from the part of him still acting on his denial, the eight year old who wanted the happy family dream. “Are you saying your parents are  _ better _ than mine?”

“No!” amends Gus, quick and indignant. “Shawn, why would I say that? Just because yours are getting divorced--!”

Sitting up, Shawn wrinkles his nose and holds out a hand. “Can I have the Lite Brite back?”

“For now,” Gus warns. He tosses the toy Shawn’s way before swiveling back around to his desk, saying in the while, “You can stay, but I still need to finish my homework.”

"I'll just wait until you're done."

Shawn busies himself by ripping the translucent pegs out of the slots and pooling them on the blanket beside him. He can think of no reason as to why Gus loves Pluto so much he feels it needs to be embroidered in light, but he does, the evidence decrees it so. With a freshly empty board, Shawn starts poking in a dotted pattern, nothing conscious nor specific. He slips into another realm, a steady rhythm of picking up, pondering, and poking. By the time he disengages from the game, a deep blue had befallen the room. The only illuminations are the Lite Brite in his hands – glowing yellow and green in the shape of a pineapple – and the single lamp shining from Gus’ desk where the very boy hunches evermore.

Shawn swats the toy to the side and rolls over the bed until his feet hit the carpet.

“Homework? Still? Dude, it doesn’t take that long to crunch some numbers, dot some t’s, and slash some i’s, or whatever.”

“It does when you actually want to  _ pass _ the class,” Gus says, not looking up.

“You can pass with a C. Hell, you can pass with a D plus.”

“Yeah,  _ no _ can do, Shawn.”

Shawn presses his lips into a line. He wants to flop back against the mattress, but then what? What can he do lying down? Instead, he leaps to his feet and paces in front of the dresser. The surface on top is empty save for a couple picture frames: Gus and Joy, the whole Guster family, Gus and him. Shawn pauses long enough to acknowledge the tug in his chest but not so long that it becomes obvious to the rest of the room. His eyes slide over the frame just after that – the last image – the one of Mister and Misses G. The former has an arm around his wife’s shoulders, the latter leans her entire body into the embrace of her man, and their lips are captured curving into smiles

Had mom ever stood like that? Shawn configures the Spencer living room mentally; he zooms in towards the mantle of the fireplace. Frames line the edges, bare and black, the photos contained within them; he screws his eyes shut to improve his clarity–

“Shawn.” Gus’ bark cuts right through Shawn’s haze.

“Yeah, wha’?” (He hates how his voice cracks.) He clears his throat and re-pronounces: “What?” as he turns on the spot. Eyes falling over his best friend, he can tell while once there was confusion across Gus’ face, all that now remains is concern. A stone’s throw away from pity. And pity is the last thing Shawn wants.

“Do you want to stay for dinner?”

_ But that? _

His spirits lift at the offer. That he does want.


End file.
